1932 (SATURDAY)
SWEDEN: Per A. Hansson became the new Prime Minister of Sweden as a new Socialist government came to power. This ministry undertook a rearmament program in response to deteriorating relations between Germany and the Soviet Union.
1937 (FRIDAY)
CHINA: The Japanese capture Baoding (Paoting) in northern China.
1938 (SATURDAY)
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Rejecting the German demands, the Czechoslovak government mobilized the army in preparation for war. This marked the most serious crisis to European peace since the outbreak of World War I.
September 24th, 1939 (SUNDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: The US freighter SS Black Condor, detained by the British for the past week, is released.
GERMANY: France fires guns on the eastern border and bombs the German Zeppelin base at Friedrichshafen.The Zeppelin works were at Fredrichshafen as they still are today. LZ-127 GRAF ZEPPELIN and LZ-130 GRAF ZEPPELIN II survived to the outbreak of war but were destroyed on Göring's orders in early 1940. (Marc Small)
Two aircraft of 10 Squadron RAF based at Dishforth, Yorkshire, carry out a successful leaflet drop over Hamburg and Bremen despite severe weather.
POLAND: Warsaw: The City Hall lies in ruins, the sewers are destroyed, the city's few remaining wells besieged by long queues who brave death by shellfire for water. Pestilence and hunger are new enemies; still quivering flesh is stripped from a horses bones as soon as the animal is hit by shellfire. Morale breaks: "Today for the first time, we heard women scoffing at our army....'Perhaps we are going to fight tanks with bows and arrows like the Abyssinians', one remarked bitterly.
ROMANIA: Poland's President Moscicki and its armed forces chief, Marshal Smigly-Rydz are interned. Smigly-Rydz returned to Poland to join the resistance, and is believed to have been in killed in 1943 by the Germans. Moscicki went to Switzerland and died there in 1946.
U.S.S.R.: Soviet Union proposes military alliance to Estonia. The alliance would give Red Army bases in Estonian territory. The Estonian leadership, convinced that all resistance would be futile, hastily send plenipotentiaries to Moscow.
ATLANTIC OCEAN:
U-13 sank SS Phryné.
U-31 sank SS Hazelside.
U-33 sank SS Caldew.
U-34 captured SS Hanonia.
U-4 sank SS Gertrud Bratt.